Communism in Canada

After the First World War inflation and industrial unrest led many workers to look to radical solutions and to use the rhetoric of class struggle to justify their demands for better conditions. Seeing the inequalities and injustice and developing a strong social conscience, some Canadians, such as Henry Norman Bethune, became increasingly interested in communism. By endorsing the Manifesto of the Communist Party of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, some called for the complete overthrow of the capitalist system and capitalist state. The Communist Party of Canada was formed in 1921 as the Canadian affiliate of the Soviet organization known as the Third International. Many Canadians and several politicians soon came to fear communists and regard them as agitators. Exploiting these popular insecurities, Quebec premier Maurice Le Noblet Duplessis, for example, passed the Act Respecting Communistic Propaganda in 1937. It was designed to intimidate labour leaders and “agitators” by threatening to close their offices for any alleged communist activities. Later, during the Cold War, the Canadian government sided with the United States, with whom it shared the conviction that the spread of communism had to be stopped and contained.